Having marked the anniversary of the assassination of the Great Emancipator with the launch of the Great E-mancipator blog, I’ve been promoting it across the various lists and mailing lists I’ve been using and accumulating.

In some cases this has resulted in completion of the SURVEY, in others personal emails (all polite, thanks John, Dan and others) and in the case of the e-democracy list, some supportive discussion, thanks Paul and Jeremy.

I’ll pick up some threads from Paul here, since they are very relevant.

Channels – “who else uses channels?” “blunt usage”? – has anybody any favourite/preferred alternatives? I had the same problem with my research supervisors and the term “silo“. I also have a concern about channels turning into silos – now that’s worrying if you don’t like either expression! I still believe that customer/citizen contact should be managed as a whole with the I.T. that supports it.

Drop-outs from online processes better than user satisfaction – but what about the other channels? The person wanting face-to-face at five-to-nine?

“We still do not have a single central resource for gov webbies like the Australian state of Victoria has had for several years > http://www.egov.vic.gov.au/” – again but I like to see this across all communication/service channels?

“Strategy is extremely patchy rather than holistic” – this is a ket element of my dissertation, its a Civil Service modus operandi if I’m correct. They have no idea what to do, so ask everyone else to provide exemplars, and then cherry-pick the best or in the worst instance the low-hanging fruit! At the end of the exercise, everybody is doing something different at public expense but central government have a model for all to follow, if it isn’t too late? Prime examples of this in e-government were Implementing Electronic Government Statements 1 & 2, the Priority Service Outcomes and a string of ‘national projects’.

The discussion continued and I’m looking forward to refining the model with such feedback.

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About me

The blogger is Mick Phythian, a Research Associate at De Montfort University in Leicester, U.K. and former ICT Manager at Ryedale District Council in North Yorkshire, England. He was also a founder member of the Local CIO Council and regional Chair of Socitm.

Any opinions expressed on this weblog are purely those of the author.

He is not the Great Emancipator! The Great Emancipator was President Abraham Lincoln. The blog is so-called because some people perceive e-government, transformational government or, heaven forbid, government to be the emancipator of us all...